Heather Bellamy spoke with Trevor Cooling

Professor Trevor Cooling

Theos, the public theology think tank, have released a paper entitled Doing God In Education. Written by Trevor Cooling, the report argues that God belongs in the classroom not simply because it is a 'right' that comes with living in a liberal society, but because the Christian contribution to education is positive and constructive, contributing powerfully to the common good. Trevor is Professor of Christian Education at Canterbury Christ Church University and Heather Bellamy spoke with him to find out more.

Heather: You've recently written a report entitled Doing God in Education. What do you cover in that paper?

Trevor: Essentially it's looking at the way we think about the Christian contribution to education. I'm challenging what I see as a very influential idea. That idea is that Christian faith is really just clutter you don't need in education; it's something that you can do without and what we really need to focus on is the information or the facts that you are learning in the classes.

Heather: What do you mean by doing God in education then?

Trevor: What I mean is that we actually treat the faith perspective as central and absolutely relevant to what goes on in classrooms. The tendency is to see the Christian faith or indeed any other form of religious faith as something that is a private hobby of those who have a particular interest in life, but it's not integral to the way in which people think about the world and therefore not central to education.

Heather: Are you talking about all subjects and not just RE?

Trevor: I am talking about all subjects. RE is a really great subject and it's important that we have it in schools and it's taught well, and particularly at the moment because it's under threat I would want to support that. However to treat religion as though we just keep it in one little box in the curriculum; we never let it out from there, I think is to marginalise the importance of faith in human life.

Heather: Would you actually go as far as to say that God is increasingly being removed from education?

Trevor: I think that because we find it embarrassing to talk about God in our society, we have a tendency to leave him out and therefore to marginalise the significance of what I call God talk in human life. It's particularly characteristic I think of Britain and Europe in general because we're quite a secular continent; whereas in other parts of the world people talk naturally about God.

Heather: It's interesting you mention about being secular, because in your report you mention that humanism as 'an influential non-religious disbelief system. In education it has a significant voice through the work of the British Humanist Association'. What influence have they had on education in the UK?

Trevor: Well they're a very important group, and personally I welcome their involvement because they represent a significant element in the population; people who think about life from the perspective of atheism. I think that they are a very important group to have involved and I personally work very closely with them. However what I'm saying in the report is that one of the things that is central to a humanist understanding of life is that religious belief is - well the word that I use is clutter, rather than integral to human life. Actually I think that's a position which is implicitly assumed by a lot of schools and therefore in one sense they're conveying a humanist message to their pupils.

Heather: So what about science? That can very often be a hot topic. Do you think that intelligent design or creationism should be taught alongside evolution in science?

Trevor: I think that issue is a bit of a distraction, because to me the real debate is not between evolution and creationism, but it's between whether or not things happened purely by chance or there was a creator. That to me is the critical distinction. What I would want emphasized in science teaching is that that question about where things came from; how life began; whether God was involved or not is something that everybody ought to be thinking about. I'm not too worried about the debate or the mechanism, but I am worried about being able to say that belief in a creator is an integral part of human life.

Heather: Another aspect of this is faith schools. They dominated the league table of the best performing primary schools in England at the end of last year. They often do very well. Do you think faith schools are beneficial for society?

Trevor: I do, but not because they produce better results. I think the danger is that we buy into a very utilitarian view of education, which is that results are what matters in the end and nothings else and try to use faith or Christian schools to improve that. I think that's like becoming a Christian in order to become rich. I just don't think that matches the faith. The contribution faith schools can make is that they allow the Christian community to show how thinking as Christians, thinking from Christian faith, is beneficial for the whole community. It's a way of showing that we can make a contribution to the wider community from the perspective of faith.

Heather: Let's just look at one final area and that's teachers and pupils wearing jewellery relevant to their faith or offering prayer, or talking about their faith. Those expressions are not in lessons in terms of what they teach, but should teachers and pupils be free to express their faith in those personal ways in school?

Trevor: I think the answer to that is yes they should. I can only talk about Christians here as that's what I am. I think it's very easy for us to get on our high horse and just try and defend our rights. Actually God didn't put us on this earth to defend our rights. He put us on this earth to be his servants. I think therefore sometimes we get very defensive about having our own bits of expression protected, when really that's not the most important thing that we should be thinking about.

Heather: So who is this report researched and written for and what are your hopes of how it will be used to improve religion in education?

Trevor: It's written for the audience that wants to think about the place of religious faith in education, particularly in what I call the public system, i.e. the system of schools that are financed by the government. The hope is that it will help us as a society to take the role of religious faith more seriously in education. I think that one of the things that we don't do very well in this country is to recognise the important role that religious faith plays in the identity of many citizens.